Beyoncé at the Super Bowl: her appearance was a show-stopping success

Beyoncé promised that she would sing live at the Super Bowl. And she did, sort of, belting out an aggressive, loudly mixed lead-vocal over layers of backing vocals, which may or may not have been pre-recorded. Meanwhile, her husband Jay Z watched proudly from the stands while his voice boomed out of the speakers in an act of virtual ventriloquism, rapping the opening to Crazy In Love. It is the modern way. With a band of on stage musicians adding parts to pre-recorded backing tracks, who can really tell what’s live or not anymore? And does anyone really cares? After all, the controversy over Beyoncé’s miming at the presidential inauguration, she was greeted with rapture at the New Orleans’ Mercedes Benz Super Dome, where her brand of flashy, sassy, pyrotechnical, over-the-top r’n’b perfectly chimed with an event that (to the untutored eye, anyway) appears to be more about advertising American power than an actual sporting occasion.

It is hard to imagine this kind of thing happening at, say, the FA Cup final. If Wembley Stadium were temporarily taken over by what appeared to be a troupe of souped-up Burlesque dancers, flashing cleavage and thighs, while a pop star treated the occasion as a kind of homage to herself, the response of the UK’s gleefully irreverent football crowd would be enough to terrify any live television broadcaster. Beyoncé wasn’t leaving anything to chance, let alone the reaction of a sporting crowd. She appeared not to have only brought her own hi-tech stage, but her own audience, performing to front rows of young, screaming, dancing fans who looked a lot less like football fans than the kind of kids who used to fill up the Top Of The Pops studio. They were the uncritical conduit for viewers back home. Beyoncé’s performance, balancing energetically exuberant movements and vocals with a charming, smiling intimacy was, really, all for the cameras.

Beyoncé performs during the half-time show of the NFL Super Bowl XLVII football game in New Orleans

The Super Bowl has become a much coveted stop on the promotional trail, 15 minutes of free advertising for global super-brands, with an estimated television audience of over 100 million. Last year, more people tuned in to see Madonna at half-time than actually watched the game. After taking a maternity year off, Beyoncé is on the comeback trail in 2013 and this was her shop window. She certainly worked it, reminding us that here is a star who really has all the skills that matter in the modern pop world. She looks fantastic, she can dance, she is a charismatic band-leader and a really great singer, although there is more technical bravura than emotion in her dazzling, twisting vocals, punctuated throughout with growling, commanding exhortations to “Come on!”. With her troupes of scantily clad dancers, there were moments when it looked like a 21st century can can routine crossed with a military assault. Following her demure appearance at the inauguration, this was all quite aggressive, a full frontal, take-no-prisoners assault on the senses, loud, flashy, energetic and breathtakingly accomplished.

Typically for a modern pop production, Beyoncé’s show was all about veneration of the self. She marched on to a stage made up of two of her glowing profiles (you’ve got to give it to her, nobody quite marches like Beyoncé), beneath a towering, blazing silhouette of her own body. This is not music as a servant to the occasion but the occasion as a servant to the star and we are implicitly invited to worship at the altar of an all-singing, all-dancing, showgirl goddess.

Judging by the instant response of social media (which is how we judge everything these days, isn’t it?) Beyonce’s appearance was a show-stopping success. Indeed, she almost did stop the show. Shortly after her set, power failed, plunging the stadium into darkness. The implication might be that Beyoncé’s showbiz extravaganza had used up all the available electricity and blown America’s collective fuse.